In order to establish the fundamental
credibility for defending the historical Roman Liturgy it
would be necessary to first establish a deeper foundation
onto which the larger analysis should be placed.

Liturgy would have
no existence apart from man and the redemption offered him
by the Incarnate Lord through the Church He founded.
To assess the historical form of the Roman liturgy –
indeed any Christian liturgy – what is required is an
antecedent Christian anthropology: an understanding of the
mystery of man in his actual condition. That
condition has in itself certain aspects of being and needs
of correction fundamental to the pursuit of man’s
supernatural destiny.

In order to evaluate
the vetusordo of the Roman Rite it is
essential to reaffirm before anything else the absolute
necessity of pursuing virtue in the practice of
religion. In that regard we must then understand how the
practice of virtue approaches the liturgy, principle font
of all Christian action, and is reinforced through its
embrace.

In many ways modern
man asserts an independence of spirit and self-sufficiency
essentially antithetical to the Christian understanding of
human life and its purpose. The obsessive drive towards
what is conceived as “personal freedom” has, especially
since the 19th century, led to a preponderant
rejection of the very Christian values on which western
civilization is founded. The result has been the onslaught
of radicalindividualism and the influence
of this movement has certainly spilled into the Catholic
Church.

In this process
truth has increasingly been perceived as subjective
and therefore unattainable. Skepticism, or the
preconceived notion that there can be no objective truth,
readily discards the various human disciplines required in
truth’s pursuit. In the wake of that, tolerance
becomes the operative principle instead. Both the rigor
of discipline and the judgments of truth are perceived as
acts of intolerance since truth assiduously seeks
to separate and discard the delusions of error.

In his 1995 book, A New Song
for the Lord, Cardinal Ratzinger observes,

Skepticism seems to be
a dictate of tolerance, and, as such true wisdom. But we
should not forget here that truth and freedom are
inseparable… Ignorance is dependency, slavery… Only when
understanding opens up, when we begin tocomprehend what
is essential, do we begin to be free. [1]

The only valid
approach to God, and therefore the only valid approach to
the channels leading to God, is by recognizing the primacy
of truth and its relationship to personal
freedom. This primacy requires in man what the
Cardinal calls the asceticism of
truth,[2]or the disciplined self-control
of humility before the fact, allowing the higher sources
of God, Revelation, Scripture, Magisterium and other
vehicles of tradition their preeminence while the will and
reason bend to what the sources give to the
individual who receives. The Cardinal observes,

The lack of truth is
the major disease of our age. …The pain of truth…has to
be accepted day in and day out. Only in truth’s humble
patience do we mature from the inside and become free
from ourselves and for God.[3]

Christ, Who
Christians profess to be the Way, Truth, and Life, calls
us to an imitation of Himself. According to Cardinal
Ratzinger this call is, “concerned not simply with a human
agenda or with the human virtues of Jesus, but with His
entire way”.[4]

The Cardinal is
quick to point out that the authentic manner of following
the Lord is not merely a “narrow moralism” viewing life
from the negative side nor an “exalted moralism for heroic
souls determined to be martyrs”, but rather,

Jesus’ call can only be
comprehended from the broad paschal context of the entire
exodus, which goes “through the curtain.” From this goal
the age-old wisdom of humans acquires its meaning – that
only they who lose themselves find themselves, and only
those who give life receive life (cf. Mark 8:35). [5]

This “exodus” or passage “through the
curtain” is none other than the authentic entrance into
the life of grace – the reception of God’s Kingdom come
upon us. It is the embrace and imitation of Christ asHe is with all His power, by man as he is
withallhislimitation. By the
penetration of the former into the life of the latter, one
can come to know the power and experience of Jesus’
Paschal mystery. That is nothing less than the
personal experience of sharing in the death and
resurrection of Jesus to the end of sharing in His glory.
The process has concomitant benefits in this life, being
the Kingdom of God come upon us in the present world, the
only true leaven for human society.

In this reality
there can be no question of the impositionfromourside of another agenda onto what is
already willed for man by God in Christ. Nor can man
reduce God’s will by truncating the imitation of the Son
to limited terms of moral conduct alone. The mystery of
following Christ is integral: it is to follow and embrace
God and His will for us as something given by HimasHeis and received by us as we
are. This is no simple tautology: it is to
articulate the truth that God is first and independent,
sovereign, perfect and all knowing, while man is secondary
and dependent, imperfect and ignorant.

The mystery of true
human freedomlies in the right understanding of
man’s limitations and knowing that Christ alone can truly
set us free. Such freedom is accessible to man in his
actual condition only by a free cooperation with grace.
This, of its very nature, requires embracing truth as
sovereign, entering into the humility of self-abnegation,
or, in short, passing through death in order to receive
new life. The self-abnegation of Christian humility is
not some expression of a darkened psyche, but rather an
unleashing of the power of Christ to transform
which is infused into this world when His death and
resurrection are embraced. Cardinal Ratzinger writes that
this power of transformation is found in the hope of the
Church, as evident in “asceticism, humility, penance; the
natural and supernatural virtues; also the great basic
ministries, martyria, diakonia, and
leitourgia.” [6]

To understand the true nature
of liturgy, Christians first need to discover anew the
doctrine of original sin. In so doing there will be
reestablished the supernatural reason and motives for
embracing the death of Christ and concomitant practice of
ascetic virtues. Then will reemerge a right grasp of the
power and divinepurpose of Jesus’ atoning
sacrifice and how it is the font of all grace. The
asceticism of the Son is His obedience to the Father; the
blood of His sacrifice becomes our source and power for
new life effacing original sin and its consequences. As
such, this constitutes one of the four principle ends of
the Eucharistic liturgy.

To draw true benefit
by participation in the eucharistic liturgy it is
essential that the individual within his ecclesial context
willingly embrace, enter into, and share personally
in the death of Christ. In A New Song For the Lord,
Cardinal Ratzinger quotes a passage by St. Basil summing
admirably the whole Patristic tradition in this regard:

“The plan of God and
our Redeemer for human beings consists in calling them
back from exile and bringing them back from the
alienation which came about because of disobedience… For
the perfection of life is necessary to imitate Christ,
not only in terms of meekness, humility, and patience
imitated in His life, but also in terms of His
death… How do we achieve a similarity to His death?
…What is to be won by this emulation? First of all, it
is necessary to break through the form of our past
life. According to the words of the Lord this is not
possible if one is not reborn (cf. John 3:3). For
rebirth is… the beginning of a second life. To begin a
second life, however, one must put an end to the
first.” [emphasis in citation] [7]

This second life, of
course, is never to be understood as a destruction of the
natural life of man but rather a cooperative conversio
ad Deum through which human life is elevated from sin
and its effects to the supernatural reality for which man
has been created. This conversio is the corrective
of life turned around: a new life begun in God, sin
confessed, self-restraint engaged, weakness mastered,
heaven pursued. It is made possible by the mystery of the
Cross actually entering into personal human experience by
cooperation with antecedent grace. All this is, quite
simply, part of that truth which Christ is.
Integral to the process is that it is the true Christ
alone that sets man free, not some other. Any
“freedom” that suggests its rewards will come without
self-death in Christ is that ignorance leading to slavery
of which the Cardinal speaks having inevitable,
predictable consequences for the individual, family and
society. Unfortunately such ignorance is everywhere
evident in the world – and rampant in liberal Catholic
thought – today.

In the many chimeric
paths to “freedom” now found everywhere, the necessary
path of the “asceticism of the truth,” namely sincere
self-examination, self-correction, self-mastery, and
penance as both physical mortification and spiritual
reparation, is replaced almost entirely by an aggressive
self-indulgence hiding under the sobriquet self-fulfillment.

As a prominent illustration one need only
recall the deep social unrest fomented everywhere in
western societies in the late 1960s. Emanating from the
moral disenfranchisement of the intellectual elite in many
prominent universities and social institutions at the
time, there emerged a particularly agitated global social
movement colored by quasi-religious overtones bordering on
social revolution. It espoused apparently noble concerns
of justice for the downtrodden. The apparent good these
aspirations reached for was – and remains – preconditioned
by the philosophic principles actually operative in many
of their advocates.

The prominent
American political scholar, Dr. Robert H. Bork, a
Protestant, in his 1996 book, Slouching Towards
Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and America, perceptively
describes the genesis and inexorable direction of western
society today. It is overwhelmingly dominated by freedom
movements driven by the now universal phenomenon of
morally and spiritually disenfranchised radical
individualism. The massive social unrest unleashed in the
1960’s and early 1970’s was deeply rooted in this all too
familiar pattern of human behavior.

In the latter half
of the present century a very old error has reemerged
everywhere, the more insidious because it is largely
unperceived. It has come revamped in modern language and
expression, but it remains what it is: man is the source
of his own salvation. Radical individualism is little
more than a new incarnation of Pelagianism, evincing the
notion that man is the source of his own salvation and
that he can obtain “justice” if he just apply himself.
The modern concomitant to this old heresy is that in the
process man will be “fulfilled” and grow in
“self-esteem”: in his efforts to better the world, he
will better himself.

If Cardinal
Ratzinger rightly says that true faith in Christ can only
come again through the “asceticism of truth,” it is
obvious that the weakening of faith and practice derives
from error and self-indulgence. In the 20th
century world of ever advancing communications, opinion is
formed and driven by those who control the media. The
social unrest of the 1960’s and 1970’s was engendered
particularly by what Dr. Bork describes as a
“pseudo-intellectual elite” found in superabundance in
middle social institutions, particularly universities, and
later spread deeply into the American judicial system.
Pseudo-intellectuals are those who are possessed firstly
by intellectual pride, secondly by the error that pride
opens itself onto, and thirdly by the unwillingness to
bend conviction and personal conformity to that which
truth demands. Be all that as it may, this phenomenon
drives the media in society at large:

Intellectuals may be
intellectually negligible, but they are an important
cultural force nonetheless. Because they wield the
power of language and symbols, their values and ideas
are broadcast by press, movies, television,
universities, primary and secondary schools, books and
magazines, philanthropies, foundations, and many
churches. Thus, intellectuals are influential out of all
proportion to their numbers. Worse, it may be that their
leftist political and cultural attitudes are permanent,
beyond the reach of rational argument. [8]

The resultant social
problem is seriously malignant because the intellectual
elite is not driven by the truth of “rational argument,”
let alone revelation, but by an aggressive ignorance and
concomitant slavery of error. At the root of it all is
the virulent liberalism condemned over and over again by
the Magisterium, particularly that of the 19th
century papacy. These condemnations spell out with
remarkable accuracy the effects of liberalism’s error, its
principles of private judgment, independence from God and
obedience to any law higher than the individual, all of
which serves to undermine Christian faith and practice,
and its inevitable effects on human society at large.

These are the very
condemnations decried by the University of Notre Dame’s
Professor White in his book, Roman Catholic Worship :
Trent to Today, when he makes the biased remark that
liturgical change was held back by “two of the most
reactionary of Popes, Gregory XVI…and Pius IX, who issued
the Syllabus of Errors in 1864 condemning a wide swath of
“progress, liberalism, and modern civilization”.”

According to White,
Pope John XXIII “threw open the door to the modern
world”. The professor neatly passes over the contents of
the opening speech given by that same Pope to the newly
assembled Fathers of the Second Vatican Council. Pope
John made clear his intention that,

The Twenty-first
Ecumenical Council, which will draw upon the effective
and important wealth of juridical, liturgical,
apostolic, and administrative experiences, wishes to
transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any
attenuation or distortion, which throughout twenty
centuries…has become the common patrimony of men. …from
the renewed, serene, and tranquil adherence to all the
teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness
as it still shines forth in the Acts of the Council of
Trent and First Vatican Council, the Christian,
Catholic, and apostolic spirit of the whole world
expects a step forward toward a doctrinal penetration
and formation of consciousness in faithful and perfect
conformity to the authentic doctrine…[9]

This can hardly be understood as “throwing
the doors open to the modern world” as Professor White
implies, since Pope John XXIII’s expressed
intention was that through whatever the Second Vatican
Council would do the common patrimony of twenty
centuries of received Catholic Christianity was to “shine
forth” even more clearly, “without attenuation or
distortion”, “in faithful and perfect conformity to the
authentic doctrine.” That patrimony is none other than
tradition in its fullest, ecclesial sense, and
comprises a very articulate condemnation of error
including that of reckless human pride wishing to throw
off the shackles of right reason applied to human weakness
in the intellectual process. Even less does it indicate
dismissing the ancient traditions of western cult almost
without notice or reference to its historic development as
a means for its “restoration”. In every case the
“asceticism of truth” requires the humilityofobedience and the corrective of moral virtues to
the irregularity of fallen nature. Furthermore, there is
no doubt that lower movements of the flesh effect the
ability to will and think according to right reason. Moral
virtues are the necessary first substrate for any
Christian action whatsoever.

It is certainly
logical that after Vatican II the teachings of Catholicism
against the dangers of liberalism were meant to remain
standing intact and that fundamental principles of faith
and practice were to remain operative as well. It is
difficult to see how the dogmatic “acts of Trent and
Vatican I” are upheld when they are attacked or that a
deeper penetration of the Christian tradition is manifest
in the ever increasing eclipse of religious language or
practice that publicly, palpably and perceptibly pursues
the virtue and practice of humility, obedience,
mortification and self-denial. Though these are scarcely
ever mentioned any longer they will always remain integral
parts of martyrdom’sdevotion – the
apostolic, patristic heritage of faith which substitutes
asceticism for physical imitation of the death of
Christ. Asceticism is required and not merely
counseled by apostolic faith.

There is little wonder in Pope John Paul’s
refrain that the Second Vatican Council still needs to be
discovered in its authenticity. It is not unreasonable to
say that in many ways the intention and implementation of
the Council has been hijacked and replaced by an agenda
other than the one intended by the majority of the
Fathers. The spirit, called the anti-spirit of the
Council” was, as Cardinal Ratzinger has remarked, evident
on the floor of the Council in its deliberations.

This subject, far
from being a digression from the present study, is
fundamental to the whole. The very liberalism constantly
condemned by the Church lies openly at the heart of the
rejection of Christian values in the modern world. It is
radically responsible for the disenfranchisement of whole
generations of youth whose lives, distracted by
materialism, are simultaneously dispossessed of principles
of self-denial and any supernatural awareness.

By continuous
exposure to the vast array of social communication young
and old alike are led more and more deeply into principles
of false liberty and increasingly entrenched in slavery to
its ignorance and sin. As a constantly growing social
phenomenon, this, in turn, corrupts society more and more
as a whole. The process is engendered by a
pseudo-intellectual elite now in control of most of the
media and wielding enormous political power. This elite
is constant in its on-going development and implication of
presenting “freedom” as the individual divorced from
objective truth and self-restraint, and disavowing the
virtue of obedience as an encroachment on personal
liberty.

That, in point of
fact, this elite is not yet representative of the general
opinion of the majority violates its own expression of
enthusiasm for “democratic process”. It is, however, in
control, at least in the United States and similar
societies, in key educational, ecclesial, and judicial
institutions. The whole is a vicious circle:
self-realizing, self-expanding social phenomenon,
anti-Christian and Pelagian in nature, it attacks the
dignity of man, his society, and his every institution.

In order to counter
this attack against the foundation of human civilization,
because of its preeminent place in the world, the Catholic
Church needs to rediscover its authentic ascetic tradition
and promote its principles and practice. It needs to
reaffirm in liturgy and legislation, principle and
practice, the spiritual substrate of martyrdom’s
devotion, that sharing in the self-sacrificing Christ.

The power of the
cross, and all that it represents, is so real and
effective that it once brought down the whole of the pagan
Roman Empire and built a Christian civilization in its
place. The truth of asceticism is uniformly
interwoven into the witness of all Sacred Scripture,
Christian history, and every historical liturgical
tradition. The realization of this patrimony would
certainly be part of Pope John XXIII’s wish that the
Church’s authentic tradition “shine forth” clearly to the
present world “without attenuation or distortion.” The
destruction of the liturgy dimension of that patrimony –
which is what has, in point of fact, taken place – is an
obvious violation of the Council’s explicit purpose.

Apparent
humanitarian concerns often mask the selfishness of
libertarianism. In the 1960’s and 1970’s the students, and
liberalized society in their wake, often vocalized broad
demands for peace, justice, freedom and rights for the
downtrodden. But underlying the stated concerns was an
erosion and outright attack on the authentic
Judeo-Christian values carrying the same names. The
authentic values are the very foundation of western
civilization. Bork cogently describes what happened to
the youth of America clearly lacking in the practice of
authentic religious principles of self-knowledge and
self-abnegation. These were, however, the children of
parents who themselves held these values, having
self-sacrificed so that their children would not have to
suffer the wants that the parents had known while growing
up:

The absence of economic
pressure and the assumption that there would never be
want in the future led the young to boredom. Life
stretched before them as a wasteland of suburbia and
consumerism. One young idiot later said that “hell is
growing up in Scarsdale.” Boredom is a much underrated
emotion. The young, especially the very intelligent and
very vigorous, who have not yet found a path in life,
are particularly susceptible to boredom’s relentless
ache. It is an emotion that is dangerous for
individuals and for society because a lot of the cures
are anti-social: alcohol, narcotics, cruelty,
pornography, violence, zealotry in a political cause.
Many of the Sixties generation shopped that list. The
rhetoric of revolution, was, as Peter Berger said, “not
so much motivated by sympathy with black people in slums
and yellow people in rice paddies as by boredom with
Connecticut”. [10]

It is quite unlikely
that the Protestant American political scholar Robert Bork
has been influenced by the thinking of the Roman Catholic
theologian Cardinal Ratzinger. The concurrence of their
thinking clearly demonstrates from very different vantage
points the same reality. Cardinal Ratzinger on this
subject:

Strangely enough,
people from the dominant nations are in no way happy
with their type of freedom and power; they feel that
they are dependent on anonymous structures that take
their breath away – and this even in those places where
the form of government assures the greatest possible
freedom. Paradoxically, the cry for liberation, for a
new exodus into the land of true freedom, sounds
particularly loudly among those who have more
possessions and mobility at their disposal than we could
ever have imagined before.[11]

Why do people take
refuge in drugs? …because the life that presents itself
to them is in reality too shallow, too deficient, too
empty. After all the pleasures, all the emancipations,
and all the hopes they have pinned to it, there remains
a “much-too-little”…[12]

What both describe
is a reality that has overrun the west and every society
it influences. With boredom emergent from an affluence
devoid of true spiritual values in combination with the
drives of human nature and psychology (especially among
the naturally bright and vigorous), western society has
seen emerge a philosophy promising an elusive social
salvation. This no longer involves God or the necessity
of self-denial. It comes cloaked under the guise of
freedom movements and their various degenerate offspring.
They all encompass a philosophy wherein the individual
sets his own standard not God, the Church, nor
civil authority, and wherein the individual passes
judgment as to whether he has fulfilled it – again, not
God, the Church, nor civil authority. Its end is freedom
for the unfree. It is an aggressive form of
self-salvation and one that produces the emptiness it
contains. Cardinal Ratzinger says as much:

Redemption is replaced
by liberation in the modern sense, which can be
understood in a more psychological-individual or
political-collective way and which people like to
connect with the myth of progress.[13]

What the Cardinal
identifies as psychological-individual, Bork
identifies as radicalindividualism;
Ratzinger’s political-collective Bork calls
radicalegalitarianism. As socio-political
principles these are at complete odds with one another.
As Bork amply demonstrates in his book, though they are at
radical odds the modern demand for perfect independenceforoneandall and perfect
democratic equalityamongoneandall are the incoherent operatives which completely
dominate western society today. Needless to say
self-denial plays little role in the former and only
emerges as a certain kind of utilitarian good for the
community in the other.

This influence has
found its way into the Catholic Church under forms subtler
than those of the civil unrest of the 1960s and 1970s but
no less radical. In a recent article by Professor James
Hitchcock in the CatholicDossier he
states:

In the pre-conciliar
period the priestly vocation was always presented as
sacrificial, albeit as a sacrifice which brought deeper
and more satisfying rewards… vocation appeals always
emphasized the spirit of self-denial expected of the
priest, and many communities, such as cloistered monks
and foreign missionaries, attracted vocations by
offering almost nothing but a life of self-sacrifice…[14]

This self-sacrifice
is not an end in itself but an intrinsic part of that
losing of one’s life to the end of gaining a higher one.
It is integral to sharing in the death of Christ so as to
share His glory in heaven. Far from being destructive of
human nature, it is the fundamental way of entering into
the joy which is Christ: Unless a man lose his life, he
can not gain it. Dying to oneself is not a morbid
self-loathing overturning personal fulfillment and
self-esteem. Even less is it a “negative theology” to be
discarded in favor of a more “enlightened” one. It is the
exclusive key for entering into the joy of things
spiritual. Asceticism is a fundamental and integral
substrate to Christianjoy, and as such,
when it disappears, much more falls with its loss.
Professor Hitchcock continues in the same article:

Towards the end of the
Council this emphasis [on ascetic principles] suddenly
changed. Nothing in the conciliar documents themselves
supported this change, but through a variety of means
Catholics were persuaded that the real message of the
Council was one of release – Catholics were now being
allowed to do things they were formally not allowed to
do (eat meat on Friday). Struggling to make sense of
subtle and difficult theological ideas emanating from
Rome, it was easy to subsume all of them under the
notion that the Church was now in effect telling its
people to cease being sacrificial and to concentrate
instead on fulfilling themselves.[15]

This is an example
of how the so-called “spirit of Vatican II” (its
anti-spirit) came to insinuate itself between the stated
intention of Pope John XXIII (tradition, history, the
received Catholic patrimony, the acts of Trent and Vatican
I “shining forth with every greater clarity”) and a
weakening of discipline by casting off self-restraint and
sacrifice as protected and fostered by the liturgy and
canon law. This falsification of ascetic principle and
its exteriorization through the practice of
self-effacement, fasting and penance in the life of the
Church was, and remains, rooted in a lackofhumility that applies itself in subtle or open
dissent from all forms of tradition, the Magisterium and a
general misunderstanding or outright hostility to the
ascetic foundation of traditional Catholicism. This can
not be described by any other term than radical
since it touches the very root of the imitation of
Christ, the foundation of Christian life.

One of the
spectacular evil fruits of this abrupt change in practice
is the enormous numbers of defections from the priesthood
and consecrated life, the significant decline in vocations
and the marked polarity between the vocabulary and
practice of self-denial before the Council and what has
followed since. Its shadow may be seen in the post-conciliar
popularity of the most conservative congregations
stressing tradition and the practice of ascetic
mortification as fundamental to the priestly vocation,
when liberalized institutions have either suffered deep
decline or disappeared completely.

The loss of respect,
and hence deep reduction in practice, of this fundamental
means of imitating Christ has also been deeply
institutionalized in the Catholic Church. This is evident
in the changes in the Roman liturgy and canon law. A
glance at the new code of canon law reveals the startling
reduction in fasting obligations from what had preceded
it. That in turn, given human nature and the whole ratio
for law in light of that same fallen nature, has
resulted in the near disappearance of a practiced
asceticism among Catholics at large. This tendency is in
direct contradiction to the consistent witness of the Old
and New Testaments, and the whole of received Catholic
tradition and practice, in both the east and west.

Peritus to the
Bishop of Lugano, involved in the work of the Central
Preparatory Commission and all phases of the Second
Vatican Council, Professor Romano Amerio, in his book
Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in
the Twentieth Century, analyzes the change in pre- and
post-Conciliar positions and attitudes concerning penance
and asceticism:

Relaxation of
penitential practices has now been based on the
presupposition that the faithful now have a more mature
ascetic sense, and on the desire to spiritualize and
refine the sorts of mortifications involved. The
presupposition is at odds with the facts. Christian
populations today are generally immersed in an abundance
of sensory pleasures and worldly satisfactions; while
even those who are not are on the road to the same state
of abundance. The fact is that the Church’s lessening
of corporal privations, ostensibly in order to increase
interior denial, has led to an almost total
disappearance of fasting from the ordinary life of
Christian people… The demise of laws in this matter has
meant the overthrow of the value of obedience and the
substitution of its opposite…[16]

Amerio continues in
this text, stating that the ratio given for the
change in Church law and practice is that when the time,
place and manner of penance is left to personal
freechoice, it then becomes more meritorious.
This is a sophism as the theologian goes on to explain:

Three values are lost
in this new teaching. First, the value of doing what
penance requires from a motive of obedience to the
Church, and through using the means the Church lays
down. Second, the value that comes from performing a
penitential act ecclesially in the way described in the
traditional liturgy, leaving it to the Church to decide
on the way the substance of the duty will be performed,
rather than doing something individually. Third, the
value of giving up one’s own will as to the form of the
penance; that self-abnegation [is] itself a penance.
These values, all of which depend on the fact that the
will is bound to observe certain customs and times as
laid down, are no longer appreciated as they were… Times
of corporal penance are thus left to the free choice of
individual believers, and the fixed and sacred character
of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday ceases to be the
immovable thing it had seemed to be… The idea that
abstinence can be replaced by works of mercy undermines
the notion of…penance, …[and this] has been
institutionalized…[17]

The sophism Amerio
has analyzed encourages a false value regarding the
Christian understanding of human freedom: it dispenses
with the virtue of humble obedience as a submission to God
and the channels through which His law is manifest; as
submission to other than one’s own will. This
sophism insinuates that obedience to law is an
infringement on personal liberty which just laws protect
and foster. To overthrow the principle of obedience is to
overthrow the necessary practical and operative foundation
involved in truly following ChristWhose
atoning sacrifice is empowered because it is a wholly
self-sacrificing obedience to the Father. What is
more, the concept that law violates freedom vitiates law
as a fundamental constitutive in all human government.

Ascetic principle
demands that the whole of the human person be controlled
by the requirements of right reason in view of man’s
supernatural end. This is the law of truth.
Penance, as understood by the new definition Professor
Amerio discusses, has recently shifted from being 1) a
submission of one’s will to the law of God in virtue of
His independent sovereignty over man, and 2) the
individual’s corporal mortification as a disciplined
castigatiocarnis for training unruly flesh and
reparatio justitiae united to the atoning sacrifice
of the Redeemer for sin committed, to: anything at all
so long as it is freely chosen by the one doing it,
and therefore involving neither humility nor obedience as
its precondition. “Penance” deriving from pride is not
penance in any sense at all and certainly has no merit in
the eyes of God.

Every spiritual
author and director knows that the ascetic virtue of
penance derives from obedience to another’s will, not
one’s own, and that the internal submission of the will is
externally manifest in outwardobedience and
physicaldiscipline as corrective to the
unruliness of fallen nature. In the received
understanding, for example, of Lenten self-denial,
three kinds of works have been historically
undertaken: penance, prayer and almsgiving, based on the
words of Christ. St. Augustine explains that these works
represent benevolence, the desire for God and the control
of concupiscence.[18]
Though each manifest a kind of self-denial, they are not
the same. Penance, as such, includes physicalmortificationoftheflesh.

To quote Amerio,
“once the concept of penance is lost, everything becomes a
penance”[19].
The peritus goes on to develop the thought:

Insistence on
non-bodily penance is not actually possible, because
proud thoughts can hardly be got rid of without any
external humbling, or irregular sensual desires without
restraining the actions of the exterior senses, or the
desire to overeat by cutting down on both extravagant
and ordinary eating…[20]

And:

It is the principle of
obedience that gives bodily fasting its importance, and
that principle has been deprived of its force by the
reform in the laws of penance through the reduction in
the long periods during which abstinence had to be
practiced to a mere two days, and through leaving of all
other penance to the supposedly enlightened and mature
judgment of the faithful…[21]

Individuals are left to
their private judgment, with liberty being valued above
the law. In replying to an objection Saint Thomas says
[II, II, q. 147, a. 3 ad3.] that fasts
were “not contrary to the liberty of the faithful, but
serve instead to impede the slavery of sin”.[22]

The adulation of liberty
has become commonplace in post-conciliar theology… [the
Professor cites an example given by a priest in a Catholic
journal:] “It is simply a matter of a law that derives
its justification and its moral value from the free will
of the person who chooses to observe it in spirit, since
the letter of it is easily gotten around.” [Amerio
continues:] A priest here suggests a false understanding
of the moral law to a readership of half a million. A
man’s actions receive their value from their conformity to
the law, whereas the value of the law is here being
derived from the free act of the man who obeys it. There
is a double sophistry involved: first, that the will ought
to reject any external law, that is the dependent ought to
be independent; second, that the individual Christian
ought to disassociate himself from the bulk of the Church,
which is the collective mystical body of Christ, and set
himself up as a law unto himself.[23]

It is in such a
context that the reduction of the fasting obligations laid
down in canon law and liberalization of the concept of
fasting itself has eroded the very sense of the term and
widely undermined the practice. Professor Amerio
analyzes this change:

The reform of the rules
about fasting actually seems to change the nature of the
restriction by removing the element of an afflicting of
the flesh that was previously admitted, even in the
liturgy, and leaving only the element of moral conduct.
But penance involves not merely abstaining from
sumptuous eating but cutting down on ordinary sobriety,
with a double view: to strengthen the mind’s failing
moral energies in its struggle with the law of its
members [Rom 7:23] and to expiate the faults that even
good people fall into because of inherited weakness.[24]

Professor Amerio
discusses a phenomenon that is exceptionally widespread
among the faithful and the clergy: the
liberalization of the received understanding of man’s
relationship to God in the light of his fallen nature and
the irreducible necessity of law in helping him towards
his supernatural end. This vitiation of the need for
obedience to law hides under a sophistic exaggeration of
individual freedom. The evident collapse in humility and
its subsequent obedience, and the attendant evaporation of
the once widespread practice of physical self-denial in
the Church, is at variance with the witness of Sacred
Scripture and the received liturgical texts, themselves
rooted in, causing, and being the effect of the Church’s
twenty centuries of faith and practice.

The relaxation in
discipline has produced two effects in the peritus’
judgment:

One was verbal. The
meaning of the word “fast” has changed from going
without food for a significant period, so that one had
an empty stomach, to meaning merely not eating even if
only for a few minutes. Thus in the new sense one can
eat one’s fill and then be fasting, and as such go to
Holy Communion.[25]

A pertinent
illustration of this point, and its relationship to the
undermining of the moral and spiritual value of law and
penance, may be seen in the recent, controversial pastoral
letter of Roger Cardinal Mahony to the faithful of the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, California. In the liturgical
vision for the future proposed by the Cardinal for his
faithful, the following description is given of an ideal
Sunday parish Mass in the year 2000, subtitled, “Entrance
of the Assembly”:

In houses and
apartments all through the neighborhood, the true
entrance procession of this Mass has been in full swing,
sometimes calm, sometimes hectic. Sunday clothes are
being put on. Many families are finishing breakfast,
conscious of the one hour fast. Here and there are
adults who choose to fast altogether until taking holy
communion… [26]

A detailed analysis
of this text appears in footnote 26. It is sufficient to
mention here that the Cardinal’s concept of fasting
illustrates Amerio’s remark that now one may receive Holy
Communion on a full stomach and that this is a form of
“fasting”. Even more serious is the corollary. A new
liturgical formula needs to be crafted that fits the
change in practice instead of the received practice
deriving from the received liturgy and tradition from
which both have developed. Amerio discusses this point:

The second effect has been to falsify the
liturgy, that is to deprive the liturgical formulas of
their truth so that they now say the reverse of what the
Church actually practices…

He continues by
citing some examples of how the received liturgical texts
became problematic – they said one thing while the Church
has moved on to doing another:

The problem of these
falsified texts [rendered so because they no longer
reflect what is actually being done by the Christian
people] at odds as they are with the Church’s new
practice was solved by changing the texts themselves, so
that while remnants of the old system can still be found
in them, the general inspiration comes from the
modernized views on penance and conforms to the modern
world’s distaste for mortification.”[27]

The new orientation
of exaggerated freedom is not consonant with the received
tradition of the Church, but rather represents an
erosion of fundamental truths and practices necessary
to the pursuit of the Christian religion and authentic
Christian spirituality. These truths and practices are
connexes of the doctrine of original sin: because of its
effects, the new man born in Christ must acquire, with the
help of grace, first, the virtue of humility in his
will, and then the wider virtue of temperance in
the flesh which strengthens the will in its regard. In
the exercise of both there must be a submission to
something otherthanself. There
must be a genuine submission to God in Christ whereby the
individual imitatesHisvirtues and
joins his sacrifices to the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus’
passion and death. This is done ecclesially by
obedience to tradition, and that (tradition in its
fullest sense) is the very foundation for
law in the Catholic Church. To alter the liturgy to
reinforce an erosion of faith is counterproductive to the
received purposes of public worship.

Ascetic obedience, a
necessary concomitant to charity, brings one to experience
the full, Christological, sense of new life in the Lord.
Both elements of self-denial (humility and temperance) are
repugnant to modern man, who has in recent years, on the
widest scale imaginable since the collapse of the Rome
Empire under the moral power of Christian asceticism,
developed startling “new values” catering to radical
autonomy, sensual gratification, and a culture of death.[28]

What is highly
significant is that textual reference to ascetic
self-control has been significantly reduced in the
reformed liturgy of the Roman Rite. The reasons given for
altering the received texts is, in the words of
their principle authors, to reflect “new human values.”
The liturgy, now instead of being theologia
prima or the font exquo Christian faith
and practice is experienced and drawn, is deemed –
beginning in the 1960s – a font adquem
these “new human values” are to be imposed. With every
nuance taken into account and the most generous
interpretation attributed to the redactors, this process
is a radical departure from the norms of liturgical
development and precisely why Cardinal Ratzinger has said
so publicly, calling much of the reform hasty and
artificial. It is also why he stated in LaMiaVita (1998) that, “I am convinced that the
ecclesial crisis in which we find ourselves today depends
in great part on the collapse of the liturgy…”[29]

Fr. Carlo Braga,
assistant to Fr. Annibale Bugnini in the Consilium
(the commission responsible for the reforms in the
liturgy) made the following revealing statement in
EphemeridesLiturgicae, 1970, page 419:

Revising the pre-existing text becomes
more delicate when faced with the need to update content
or language, and when all this affects not only form,
but also doctrinal reality. This [revision] is called
for in the light of new human values, considered in
relation to and as a way to supernatural goods.
…ecumenical requirements dictated appropriate revisions
in language. Expressions recalling positions or
struggles of the past are no longer in harmony with the
Church’s new positions. An entirely new foundation of
eucharistic theology has superseded devotional points of
view or a particular way of venerating and invoking the
saints. Retouching the text, moreover, was deemed
necessary to bring to light new values and new
perspectives.[30]

If, in the words of
Pope John XXIII, the received patrimony of faith and
practice of twenty centuries, and the acts of Trent and
Vatican I are to “shine forth” with even greater clarity
and without “attenuation or distortion”, it is most
difficult to square the reasongivenbyFr. Braga and the many “retouchings”
(especially the omissions)made in overhauling the
received liturgical texts with theCouncil’ssetpurpose.

If the dogmatic
canons of the Council of Trent are to remain intact then
there is certainly no “entirely new foundation of
eucharistic theology” in the Church’s authentic teaching
that supersedes anything. If, in this case alone,
insights into the eucharistic mystery have been gained, it
is precisely because they are not new, but rather
old truthsand found within the historical
contents of a faith that can not change. These insights
will then easily blend with the received liturgical texts
because they will flow from the amazing Scriptural,
Patristic, doctrinal richness they contain, and divine
origin from which they all derive.

That same divine
faith and source is the one to which all authentic
ecumenical discussion must direct itself, Peter being the
sign, cause, and guardian of Christian unity. The Church,
therefore, does not have “new positions” on
anything that is doctrinal, try as some may to deconstruct
a number of dogmas (which are well imbedded in liturgical
tradition) in view of transient ecumenical
concerns.

The effort to change
the law of praying in order to introduce different
understandings of the faith is found no where in Christian
history except among heresiarchs seeking to change the
Catholic faith that public prayer induces. This is
exactly why Protestant reformers changed the Catholic
liturgy, and this is why many Catholics have been deeply
disturbed at the liturgical reform. The incessant and
insistent need to change the received texts and
liturgical culture arises either from an ignorance of it,
or ill will in its regard. In either case the end result
is the same: error, confusion, and erosion of faith and
practice.

In his book Roman
Catholic Worship: Trent To Today, Professor White
states quite baldly that,

One cannot deny that the second
liturgical movement adopted essentially a Protestant
agenda for worship. …the second liturgical movement
caught fire in primarily those countries like the United
States and Germany where there was a large Protestant
majority. …The leaders often had close Protestant
contacts. Even though the movement had shed its skin of
being a monastic fad, it was still suspect in many
quarters. Not the least objection was that so many of
the things being advocated sounded definitely Protestant
and were in common practice [in the Protestant church]
right down the street [from the Catholic church] in
every American town. Nevertheless the conspirators [sic]
persevered… [with the 1958 formation of a Bishops’
Commission on the Liturgical Apostolate:] The church’s
[sic] most important activity was finally to be
bureaucratized on a national level.[31]

Since this professor
of liturgics and popular author has said that the
liturgical reform actually in place adopted “essentially”
a Protestant agenda for worship it would do well to recall
that essence refer to nature, or the
ontologicalfirstprinciple in a thing’s
being. Protestantism has, as its first principle, that
same notion of independence, liberty, and private judgment
found throughout all of society today. Therefore an
“essentially Protestant agenda for worship” is underpinned
by the same principle as modern, secular society. At the
absolute heart of the Protestant independence from
the revealed Church of Christ is a denial of the Catholic
understanding of the eucharistic mysterion. There
will never be a “new position” in the Church altering the
dogmatic canons of Trent regarding the Catholic
understanding of this mystery. The essence of Protestant
worship rests on the principle of private judgment,
dissent from the Catholic tradition of revelation, and
reduces to act the concept that the individual
is the sole arbiter of truth. In effect he himself
assumes the place of God in his life, and therefore
submits neither to the true God, nor His Church, nor
tradition, nor law.

To mold a modern
reform of the received Catholic liturgical tradition along
Protestant antecedents is certainly incredible, despite
Professor White’s unbridled enthusiasm in that regard. It
would be to imbed within Catholic worship newly crafted
texts designed to reinforce not-so-new “human
values” that, in fact, are common to the thinking of both
the 16th century reformers and modern
libertarians. This is inconceivable from the Catholic
point of view.

Herein arises the
real conundrum in the new rule of Catholic worship since
liturgy is theologiaprima, the
source of faith and practice. It is the thing given
by God through the patrimony of the Church as a
continuouswhole. It is received by man
– including the guardians of the Church’s mysteries – and
must be approached with humility, reverence, a keen
awareness of fallen nature’s frailties, seeking in it what
it says to us and not what we would rather impose
on it. The Eucharistic liturgy in particular is the
summit to which and from which all else in the life of the
Church and the faithful flows.

What Cardinal
Ratzinger calls the “asceticism of truth”[32]
is particularly needed in the intellectual life of the
Church today. It is no where more important than
when rightly understanding and respecting the spectrum of
all antecedents involved when touching the very foundation
of Catholic life: its received forms of worship.
This most important point will continue to be developed
throughout the whole of Part II.

It is impossible to
“pass through the curtain,” to use the Cardinal’s phrase,
to enter into the true life of Christ, without practicing
what he means by the “asceticism of truth”:
capturing the right relationship of truth and faith, and
the concomitant practice of ascetic submission to laws
higher than self and personal opinion. This practice of
humility of will, reason, and body is the one thing
capable of correcting what he refers to as “our present
age when it gets lost in its own fantasies”.[33]

This can only happen
when humility is recognized as the substrate
to holiness, and that the flesh must be curbed by a
reasoned physical denial – not pampered through
gratification in its enormous variety – and reparation
made for sin committed. This ascetic aspect of Christian
faith and practice must be readily evident in and around
the public worship of the Church. This is certainly the
case in the vetusordo of the Latin Rite.

While it is the duty
of the Church’s hierarchy to protect and foster the full
deposit of faith – of which humility and mortification are
intrinsic and inseparable constituents – the following
observation by Romano Amerio, unfortunately, is not
without foundation:

The important fact about the present
state of the Church is, however, that [a] superficial
spirit that undervalues and ridicules mortification of
the sense, has spread to the clergy, who have thus lost
any understanding of, or attachment to, the traditional
discipline.[34]

The following is even more true:

The Church has no reason to be ashamed
of its legislation or to think its doctrine ridiculous;
it was, in fact perfectly reasonable, based on nature,
commanded by Christ and sanctioned by the obedience of
generations that were not rougher or less fragile than
the present, merely more thoughtful and less sensual.[35]

If there is a lacuna
in the liturgical manifestation of our duty to distrust
ourselves, rely on God, fear His judgment, and trust in
His merciful love, there will inevitably appear another
great danger, now everywhere apparent. Christians, clergy
and laity alike, are increasing in a worldly pride that
undermines and permits dissent from the historical Way.
Pelagian in its self-reliance, salvation is transforming
into a kind of earthly self-realization. This is
perceptible in liturgical “retouchings” that have
significantly recast – not restored – the sources.
None of this can achieve real freedom as the immense
erosion of faith, morals, and decomposition in civil and
ecclesial society indicates. What is more, as long and as
often as dissent and independence continue, the Church
will continue to suffer, the distance ever increasing
between its already marked polarities.

2.
Martyrdom’sdevotion, or the ascetic imitation
of Christ, is fostered in the Church principally by the
liturgy, secondly by teaching, and lastly protected and
guided by laws that are actually enforced. Since this
paper primarily addresses the liturgical question, the
remainder of this chapter will be limited to the question
of asceticism as it is intrinsically united to liturgy and
its approach.

To be sure the public worship of the
Church’s predominant characteristic is latreutic.
But it contains many other convergent elements that bring
to it the full fabric of its integral function and
impact. A strong didactic element is found imbedded
within its prayers and practices. Neither an exposition of
the theology of sacrifice as manifest through the liturgy,
nor the mystical associations of human offering with the
sacrifice of the Crucified One by union with liturgical
worship, is the purpose of what follows. While the
importance of neither of these is to be overlooked, what
is addressed, rather, are those immediate and tangible
elements either teaching or intrinsically fostering the
virtues of humility, sacrifice, and penance when the
Christian person approaches liturgy as such.

Before all else in
liturgical analysis the primary antecedent is humilitybeforethesource itself. Already
the ascetic principle of faith is operative, understanding
that the liturgical traditio is not “some old piece
of cloth”, to use a famous phrase of Cardinal Ottaviani,
open to free flight or arbitrary incisions and repiecing.
The texts, gestures, signs, symbols, music, full panoply
of the liturgical culture all have, together, an internal
cohesion, sense, depth, and character. The thing itself
deserves reverence because it is holy and the principle
font of revelation. In the words of Pope Pius XII,
“liturgical rites…deserve reverence and respect. They…owe
their inspiration to the Holy Spirit…”[36]

To analyze the
presence of ascetic principle as fostered through worship,
a first focus must be directed towards liturgical texts
themselves, examining their doctrinal content in view of
the received tradition of ascetic discipline. This would
include an examination of the collects, biblical readings,
and psalm selections found in the proper texts, analyzing
them in the context of the whole of Scripture’s witness,
Patristic prayer and writings, and the Church’s entire
historical tradition of ascetic theology and practice.

The temporal cycles
of the liturgy should be examined for clear evidence of
seasons wherein ascetic practices are particularly focused
upon as union with the suffering of Christ and reparation
for personal sin committed. An analysis of the balance of
the full spectrum of theological truths should be pursued,
noting the absence of imbalance in favor of
one or other aspect of the Paschal mystery. This will be
evident not only in the texts themselves, but in the
liturgical culture of ceremony and music. One should note
if the physical seasons of the year are delineated
liturgically by shorter seasons of penance and prayer
characteristic of the received, veterotestamentary
tradition at the foundation of the Christian
dispensation.

The sanctoral cycle should be examined for
the values of humility and self-denial underlying the
sacrificial life of every canonized Saint, their union
with the sacrifice of Jesus being the very foundation of
all sanctity. The universal value of self-sacrifice will
transcend every other manifestation of saintly living
except prayer itself. Therefore in the selection and
on-going revision of the sanctoral calendar, despite the
proclivities of various ages, the two-edged sword of
self-denial and prayer will always be a constant. Such an
examination should reveal a complete ascetic balance in
the collects, the readings from Scripture, the homilies
appointed for the Divine Office; severance of martyrdom’s
devotion from prayer will not normally be found in the
overall scheme of liturgical texts.

Removing this
examination to a different level, and more nuanced in its
didactic influence, the liturgical culture itself will
reflect, in its principles and practice, a discipline of
humble sacrifice.

This involves the
virtues of humility and self-discipline in the face of the
externals of liturgical action. Public worship is
certainly more than rubrics, but obedience to liturgical
directives comprises a disciplined, and at times demanding
form of humility and penance:

Being an action of public and social
character, the liturgy must have its laws to order and
regulate it. This complexus of ecclesiastical decisions
which go to make up the ceremonial must be well known
and observed if the celebration of the rites and the
practice of ceremonies is to be worthy and orderly and
is to express the meaning which the Church wishes to
give it.[37]

The careful
preparation and enactment of the matter of public worship
represents a self-disciplined humility. What is more, the
length of liturgical actions, the relative inconveniences
of wearing prescribed garments, the use of prescribed
instruments and sacramentals, and careful observance of
prescribed actions, all represent a sacrifice of will that
obeys and cooperates with the directives of the Church.
In some instances this can even become a physical penance
given the preparation demanded and the length and
complication in effectively enacting the prescribed
ceremonies, processions, blessings, and various
observances. Therefore the cultural patrimony of
worship calls upon an active asceticism that is readily
apparent in the various usages that surround the
liturgical texts themselves.

The art of
liturgical instruments themselves demand another form of
humility and rigorous discipline. The liturgy reflects
two things: God’s descent to man and man’s elevation to
God. The liturgical culture – thatmuch
greaterwhole within which the texts themselves
subsist – must reflect the right relation between God
and man. In this regard the entire ensemble must
necessarily reflect the absolute majesty of the former,
and the dependent, impoverished humility of the latter.
For this reason the liturgy must not be profane but
sacred, and in its material character must be discernibly
other than the daily actions of common life.

For the reason just
given music, its proper character, suitable preparation,
and employment comprises a discipline that has received
great attention, particularly in papal legislation since
the beginning of the present century. Conformity to the
directives of the Church in this regard comprises a very
great form of humility, studious obedience, and a
disciplined offering.

This liturgical
ensemble contributes to a right understanding and
approach to Christ in His sacrificial office as Priest,
into Whose atoning death all Christians must enter. The
sometimes cavalier attitude of many towards the texts and
rubrics, the suitable matter, choice and accomplishment of
music, and suitability of vesture and art is certainly
more marked now than when the vetusordo was
in universal force. The liturgy is a school in which the
mystery of Christ’s triumph in God, in Himself, in the
saints, and in us is rehearsed and placed before the
faithful for edification and emulation. This great
mystery engages a humble response in approaching,
accomplishing, learning, and living the truth that it is
and contains. For this reason, considered in its entirety,
the liturgy, “in giving to the Eucharist, Sacrifice and
Sacrament, all its powerful efficacy over our souls, is
the universal and official school of true asceticism…”[38]

This element is the
foundation of Christian faith and practice. Therefore in
any assessment of liturgy as such, humility, obedience,
and penance are absolutely necessary antecedents to its
understanding and accomplishment. It is only by the
possession and practice of these virtuous correctives that
one is able to approach the liturgy for what it is: the
source of the Christian faith and life.

[9]
Pope John XXIII, “Opening Speech to the Assembled
Fathers of the Second Council at the Vatican”, 11
October 1962, in Walter M. Abbott, ed., The Documents
of Vatican II (New York: Guild Press, 1966), 715.

Entrance
processions: In the received tradition of the West,
these are ceremonial, liturgical actions carried out in
the course of public worship according to the rubrical
prescriptions of the received books. They are
proximateactions of the ministers and
participants in the enactment of public worship. The
remotepreparations of the faithful in
betaking themselves to the place of public worship does
not constitute in any liturgical sense what the Catholic
west has received as being a “procession”.

This is an example of how the received
tradition is simply recast and then confused when
overextended in search of “new insights”. The result is
a change in the meaningofreceivedterms, ending with the blurring of distinctions –
in this case between the sacred action of worship, and
the profane action of human preparation for it.
Cardinal Ratzinger mentioned this in his Address to
the Bishops of Chile (op. cit.) when he said, “After
the Council many consciously made “desacralization” a
program of action. …Worship, to the extent that it must
be performed, should be expressed in the non-sacrality
of daily life…and [this has in certain measures] reduced
liturgy to the language and gestures of ordinary life by
means of greetings, public signs of friendship, and
similar things… With such theory and practice we have
certainly lost sight of the real connection between the
Old and New Testaments.”

This process leads to an inevitable
confusion among many since only those possessing a
certain kind of erudition can untangle the whole. Many
of the faithful can only follow the progression
superficially; many are confused by what becomes, in
effect, incomprehensible, or some cases meaningless
(i.e. the parishioner who is informed in a sermon that
the “entrance rite begins in the parking lot”).

This concept of human preparation being
“the true entrance procession”, has, however, been taken
without reference from Fr. Alexander Schmemann’s book,
For the Life of the World, (Crestwood, Saint
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988, pp. 27 and 28). Fr
Schmemann is a priest of the Orthodox Church of America
and develops a liturgical theology expressive of his
understanding of the eastern tradition. That the
eastern liturgical understanding can be applied
analogously to the west is certain, but the manner in
which it is done must be carefully developed within the
western framework of its own practice and tradition. For
an interesting illumination of source material unknown
to most Catholics reading the Cardinal’s pastoral, the
text under consideration should be compared with Fr.
Schmemann’s description of “sacramental journey”, noting
the close parallel between the concepts and phrases used
by Fr. Schmemann and the same concepts and phrases
developed in this section of the pastoral letter.

In regard to fasting:
Prescinding from the “many families” “conscious of the
one hour fast” and therefore observing it, are all the
other families. (Since the adjective many
is not a comparative, the remainder from which the
many are coming is undoubtedly more, for
otherwise the adjective most would have been
applied to all those who are fasting As more
than half comprises a simple majority, the other
families who are not fasting are – according to the
sense of this statement – probably more numerous than
those who are fasting, or, logically, the majority of
the parish.) This certainly sizable group of
Catholics not fasting and going to Mass, are, in today’s
climate, most likely on their way to receiving Holy
Communion as well. These other families then are either
1.) not conscious of the one hour fast and therefore not
observing it, or 2.) conscious of it and ignoring it.

In possibility 1. the value of the
promulgated law is denigrated by ignorance of it
and inadvertent failure to keep it. In possibility 2.
the law is denigrated by willful, advertent disobedience
towards its command. In both cases the many persons
involved who do receive Holy Communion without fasting
violate the Church’s publicly promulgated law and commit
sin. Within this context, the pastoral letter makes no
mention of the Sacrament of Penance relative to
receiving Holy Communion without keeping the Church’s
reduced law of eucharistic fast. In a word, the law has
little bearing, if any, on the issue, morally or
spiritually.

In mentioning “here and there are
adults who choose to fast altogether” another aspect
of the situation comes to light: there are many
families not fasting which include the more numerous
adults than the scattered “here and there” who are, as
well as all the children of a certain age who are also
required by canon law to fast but are not doing so.
Children are not adults, and no children are understood
in this context to be fasting.

Fifty years ago nearly every
adult and child of age would have been knowingly
fasting from midnight, and would have received Holy
Communion on an empty stomach in conformity to
tradition, devotion, and submission to ecclesial law in
union with the whole of the Church. In any of the
possibilities spelled out or implied in the pastoral for
the ideal parish of the year 2000, only the “here and
there” adult, and no children, are supposed observing
the received sense of Church fasting (that is,
“fasting altogether”), and that only by free choice,
not from humble obedience to an ecclesial precept,
in union with the whole Church, according to the
Church’s received tradition, motivated, at least
virtually, by obedience to God.

In the scenario Cardinal Mahony
envisions, except for these latter who are observing a
longer fast out of personal devotion, those who do
observe the minimum fast prescribed by current law are
described in the pastoral as “finishing break-fast”
[because they are] “conscious of the one hour fast”.
That one can break fast so that one may
immediately keepfast for 60 minutes is
precisely the kind of causistry the old laws are
wrongfully accused of provoking: it is a case of “hurry
up and eat” so that one can manage a 60 minute hiatus
until the next feeding.

The sense of fasting evinced in the
pastoral, at best, means a very short abstention between
times of eating, the period being sustained by a full
stomach. The example for doing this is set by parents
in front of children who can either know no differently,
or, more likely – as the young are wont to do – see
obvious contradictions in adult behavior.

None of this constitutes fasting in any
received sense of the term. “Fasting” in this context
actually means being able to ingest food within 35
minutes of the typical Roman parochial Sunday Mass and
then receive Holy Communion on a full stomach. What is
more, this will be done by adults and children perfectly
capable of the traditional discipline of fasting
mortification, and who are, thus, deprived of its
spiritual benefits. That those “fasting” only comprise
“many” of the adults of the parish, the rest ignorant of
the obligation or disobeying it, is in contrast to the
norm of fifty years ago when everyone without exception
knew of the obligation to fast and the sinfulness in
disobeying it. This new state of affairs is
certainly contrary to the received tradition of the
Church.

What is even more evident is the
distinction made in the pastoral itself between an
eat-and-fast fast, and a fast-altogether
fast. This last distinction is a real one: the former
is entirely unrelated to the Church’s received practice,
the latter is only partially in conformity to it (since
it is only devotional, and does not derive the merit and
spiritual grace of obedience to precept). The two
positions are incomprehensibly joined in a single, short
paragraph beginning with a confused explanation about
entrance processions

[28]
Abortion, for example, is often an eleventh hour form of
contrived birth control by which the unjust killing of
an innocent human becomes the remedy for the
irresponsible sexual gratification of one or both of its
parents.

[32]
Joseph Ratzinger, A New Song For the Lord, 10.
“We will have to listen to the sources which, by bearing
witness to the origin, correct our present age when it
gets lost in its own fantasies. This humble submission
to the word of the sources, this willingness to let our
dreams be snatched away from us and to obey the reality
is a basic condition for true encounter. Encounter
demands the asceticism of truth, the humility of hearing
and seeing which leads to the authentic grasping of the
truth.”